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Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.
They're people who are mutually pissed off at the amount of influence businesses have over politics, but beyond that there's very little cohesion.
A mix of the first two.
they are people who have been told that 'Obama' is bad, and that 'the government' is responsible for bad things. so now, their lives have a high occurence of bad things, so naturally, they blame 'the government'...... the problem being, nobody ever actually explained to them specifically what that 'government', precisely, was or how it actually harmed them. they just know that life's not fair, they're not happy about it, and they're gonna blame Obama.
Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.
I will have to disagree. They are not protesting those poltiicians that enable and accept this "undue" influence. There is no mention of such as the top Senators receiving campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie at the time of the crash were .......... drumroll .......... Democrats, with Obama and Clinton, Kerry and Dodd at the top of the list. Instead they are protesting against big business and rich people. :roll:
They are the unwashed moocher masses, whose only complaint with Government is that it is not big enough, and redistributing more to them. Bank it.
People have been trying to get politicians to behave, without success, for a couple of decades now. They are now moving one link up the chain of the problem.
What ? They are moving downstream, not up. Further, the only way they can change monetary influence is to have politicians change the laws and the process, which is again asking the fox to watch the hen house. This is not about changing the process of influence. It is about free-stuff.
I think that I am hearing more platitude-type statements regarding OWS that make absolutely no sense than any even Obama utters.
Its one link up. Its the corporations that are bribing the politicians through campaign contributions to do their bidding. Electing new politicians does not seem to stop this process (plus the supreme court made it far worse last year), so a change in focus is needed.
So they are going to threaten and intimidate capitalists from influencing policy ? Going to get them to pay more in taxes so that it can be redistributed to them ? With the Unions helping with the intimidation ? The goal of these moochers in OWS is to get more free stuff. That's it !!
Meanwhile, a legitimate political protest movement has been enormously successful in changing-out politicians, and altering the landscape. They will be doing it again in 13 months.
Where did I say threaten and intimidate or try to get free stuff? That comes out of your imagination not mine.
The simple fact is, if this is what is necessary to get the focus of politicians and effect the fundamental changes needed to fix our country and restore institutions to their necessary balance, then so be it (and like it or not, unregulated capitalism has been shown not to work, so lets not repeat those mistakes again in another century). It would be better if politicians had been listening to the citizenry all along instead of the elites.
So while you may be upset about this or that not meeting your moral standards, if your moral standards do not produce a functional system, then your moral standards not useful.
Probably a good analogy, Laura, is 1968, when someone finally channeled college kids' energies into electoral politics. And they went up to New Hampshire and they put on ties and jackets and they went door to door and they talked about the war and Gene McCarthy got 43% of the vote and brought down Lyndon Johnson. So yeah, I think that's Rich Trumka is trying to do. And again, look, I don't agree with their message. I mean the guys in Philadelphia said they're going to be here all winter. Well that's silly. You've made your point, you've gotten about all the publicity you're going to get. Now get on with your lives and if you really care about this stuff, organize at the ballot box. You know, we can yell and--our side, we can yell and scream about the tea party, but the tea party folks understood how to make change in 2010. They got out and voted.
..... There's no question. What happened--the protests--the anti-war movement in 1968 was doing well electorally until the convention in Chicago. And everything blew up at the convention in Chicago. Poor Hubert Humphrey had absolutely zero chance coming out of that convention because the protests turned ugly, it was violent, it wasn't productive, it wasn't peaceful anymore and it turned people off dramatically. And I think there is a risk here. There's a real risk here if it goes that way. And that's why the Rich Trumkas and all those people should be talking to the protesters and saying 'look, you made your point. You don't think by sitting here you're going to bring about change in law by just sitting here. No legislative body is going to be blackmailed. But you've made your point, you've gotten publicity for the things you've wanted to say. Now let's get out there and organize. Go home, clean up, organize, and go.'
Ed Rendell To Operation Wall Street Protesters: Go Home | RealClearPolitics
I don't think (most) of them are anti-capitalists and I don't think (most) of them are confused. Most of my knowledge of OWS comes from the Chicago offshoot - Occupy Chicago and those people have very clear grievances. I think it's a bunch of groups who are united in their frustration with the amount of influence corporations/wall st. has on their respective organizations, professions, classes, etc.Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.
Such as what then ? What changes are they going to get private America and corporate America to make to "get things in balance" ? You sound as absurd as these flakes in OWS !!
Here, in the words of Ed Rendell, ex-Governor of PA:
Which gets us back to the problem that the Democrat politicians were the biggest recipients of money from the bailout money recipients. Except that if the real goal is even greater redistribution than we now have, then all you see fits like a glove. Demonize the rich even more, then get government to take their money and give it to you. Now all is in focus. All makes sense.
Right now, I see two themes, either they are nafarious anticapitalists bent on the destruction of western society or they are a confused group of people who all want something different and have no unified voice.
...Just like the Tea Party, some people are crazy; some know what they're talking about, but everybody is pissed off.
We had responsible capitalism in earlier decades and at the same time we were an extremely prosperous nation. This can be done without any major revolutions in our system. The problem right now is that we are worshipping selfishness and it is harming the nation. As the regular joes get more poor, more public spending is needed to prop up the system (because market economies do not work without sufficient demand, which is the current root of our problem), which is why we are seeing increased public expenditures and the call for greater taxation.
It is a problem that can easily be solved through balance in incomes (not meaning everyone makes the same income or close to it, but we don't need the immense stratification we see right now) so that money is able to properly flow.
This goes back to my statement about useless morals. If we continue to worship selfishness and a winner take all attitude, we will continue to suffer economically as a nation.
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